


Of Turtles and Transformations

by spaceudon, StoryHoarder



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Missing-Nin, Mostly Gen, Near Death Experiences, Ninja, Nohara Rin Lives, Uzushio Village
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-13 02:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13560453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceudon/pseuds/spaceudon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoryHoarder/pseuds/StoryHoarder
Summary: The Sanbi has been sealed inside Rin Nohara and knowing of the destruction that would fall upon Konoha if she returned, she casts herself to her death on the hand of her teammate. Except Isobu isn't quite willing to return to the void.Or: that one story where Rin survives.





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, readers. This is my first attempt at posting a story, so I would really appreciate some feedback ;). Hopefully, it will be quite long, so fingers crossed!  
> \- StoryHoarder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!
> 
> Any older readers will know that this story is actually being rewritten. We had a couple of chapters up, but we've taken them down and started over (this time with a completely planned out plot).
> 
> Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated :)

The water lapped at her legs, and she groaned as she twisted in the sand, bringing her aching body to a sitting position. Rin put her head between her legs, feet still partially submerged. There was a burning sensation all over her body, probably from having been exposed to the sun for who-knows how long. Her head was pounding, and her entire body was throbbing from a feeling she identified as chakra exhaustion, something she was quite familiar with.  
  
She opened her eyes open blearily, but was quickly forced to squint them as they were exposed to the bright sunlight reflecting off the surface of the water. It was sometime in the afternoon, and the sun was high in the sky, pounding down with all the force of a Konoha summer.  
  
Rin frowned. Where exactly was she? Her memories of recent events seemed to be blurry at best. The last thing she could remember was-  
  
She inhaled sharply, and brought her hands to her chest, reaching for the sound of birds and the crackle of lightning, a gaping hole through her chest and eyes frozen in shock. Her hands brushed flawless skin. She froze, and felt her heart begin to speed as all her memories flooded back.  
  
A cave, Kiri nin, a stone lantern, a sealing, an explosion, the realisation, the feelings that had flooded through her as she realised the only way to save Konoha was to kill herself.   
  
There was a hitched breath, and Rin stopped moving, eyes wide and glassy. She had realised the full implications of her kidnapping, had realised exactly what instructions the seal on her contained, and come to the answer that she had- that tossing herself to her own demise on the hand of her teammate was the only solution.  
  
She stared down at her hands. They were shaking. She swallowed, and looked up again. Despite the fact that she was a shinobi of Konoha, and was meant to lay down her life for the sake of her village, her sacrifice had been a split-second decision, and she realised with a terrible certainty that if she were to be put in that situation again, she would not repeat her actions. She felt like crap. She was selfish, uncaring, weak, a horrible shinobi- and yet, she knew that she never wanted to go through that horrible sense of powerlessness again. She never again wanted to feel like her life was only thing she could offer.  
  
At that moment, she felt like the worst person in the world, and all she could imagine was Kakashi’s horror-struck face, how Minato and Kushina would look when they thought she was dead, and she felt a tearing pain in her chest. She had to get back to the village. Minato could do something, could fix the seal! He was a fuinjutsu master, and Kushina was an Uzumaki, one of the few left who had intrinsic knowledge of all things fuinjutsu.  
  
Rin stood shakily, and wiped furiously at her watering eyes. She was a kunoichi, and despite the fact that it was physically impossible for her to enter Konoha without unleashing a tailed beast upon it, if she could see Minato again, he could do something, fix her seal and allow her to see the village she loved again. She lowered her arms, and turned away from the lake, but almost fell to her knees as something inside her called for her not to leave the lake, not to go back to Konoha. She pushed it aside, and walked forwards with strides that grew continuously more confident.   
  
She paused as she reached the edge of the trees, and bit her lip. Tentatively, she placed her hand on the tree and channelled chakra through it. The tree groaned, and beneath her palm, the bark shattered, sending splinters flying. Wincing, she pulled her hand away, and examined it. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any wood stuck in her palm, but the skin was shredded. As she watched, her skin began to regrow, and it was a morbid sense of fascination that kept her eyes focused as she regenerated. Her heart ached for all the wronged medic-nins in the world, but she was infinitely grateful for this, given that she doubted she would ever be able to form medical chakra again, all her hard work training her chakra control gone to waste.  
  
She eyed the tree again, and this time there was a sinking feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t able to regulate her chakra at all, and that meant that not only would she not be able to travel in the tree-tops, she wouldn’t be able to enhance her own muscles, leaving her with stamina only slightly better than the average male civilian, and meaning that the distance she could travel over a day would be severely inhibited.  
  
She fought back the tears that threatened to spill. Not only was she god-knows where, she had a bijuu sealed within her, and now everything she spent her life working on was gone in an instant. Her medical ninjutsu and genjutsu were her two main skills, and both relied heavily on high levels of chakra control, something which she no longer had, meaning in turn that she was now completely useless, and probably at the combat ability of the average academy student.  
  
Calm down, she thought. She sat with her back against the tree, and picked up a leaf, which she placed on her forehead. It wobbled, but stayed in place, and Rin closed her eyes as she tried to organise her thoughts while at the same time channelling chakra into her forehead.  
  
She first had to figure out exactly where she was. From the foliage she had seen, she assumed she was somewhere in Kiri territory, which was quite honestly the worst possible situation she could think of. She knew Konoha was west of Kiri, but half an ocean separated them, and she had no money for a boat crossing or the chakra control to walk the distance. She had time, and while it might take her a while to build up her chakra control to that point again, it was more probable than finding a job in the cut-throat towns of Kiri and a trustworthy guide to help her cross between the two nations. She would just have to be patient, something that she was quite good at.  
  
Now that she had a plan in mind, she focused on organising her thoughts in a way that she could look at them objectively, and put her emotions to the side for the moment while she focused on a way to get back and restore her chakra control.  
  
By the time nightfall came around, Rin had managed to stick leaves to five points on her body, and was feeling a lot more positive about her makeshift plan. It was getting dark, and she was getting tired, but there was one last thing she had to try before she could let sleep claim her.  
  
Letting the leaves drop to the ground, she breathed deeply, and formed her hands into the appropriate hand signs, channelling chakra into one of the academy’s basic three ninjutsu. The resulting clone was little more than a vaguely humanoid blob, but it was what she had been expecting. The real test was with the next jutsu she was about to perform. Once again, she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She had never performed this jutsu before, but she had seen Minato-sensei use it multiple times. It was a chakra-heavy technique, so it was one she had never attempted. Rin spent a while accustoming her hands to the required symbols, before performing them in the sequence.  
  
“Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.”  
  
There was an explosion of smoke as excess chakra was let out, and when it faded, there stood the clone her sensei was fond of using, looking a little like it had been run over, but still far more accurate than the regular bunshin. For the first time, Rin felt a smile split her face. Her control was terrible, yes, but her reserves had increased exponentially, and the shadow clone was not only good for combat, but for learning as well. With this breakthrough, the time required for her to regain her control had been cut in half.  
  
Her smile broke as a yawn tore through her, and she raised her hand to cover her mouth half-heartedly. It was almost pitch-black now, and she let her eyes close and let the tree support her weight.   
  
  
By the time a few days had passed, Rin’s chakra control was far better, but she was feeling a sense of restlessness originating from the fact that she had yet to begin her journey.  Despite that, she knew that she was almost certainly deep within enemy territory, and if she wanted any chance to get back to Konoha, she would have to have at least one skill.  
  
She stood by the side of the lake. Rin closed her eyes, and truly felt the chakra coursing through her. It wasn’t hers, and it wasn’t stable. It felt foreign, but there enough of a sense of familiarity that she felt she could at least try to do something with it. Genius she may not be, but she had trained with Kakashi and Obito long enough to at least know some of their jutsu.   
  
Cautiously, she put her hands through the required symbols before bringing them to her mouth. The resultant force from the water dragon bullets is enough to send her sprawling. She watched in shock as the water shoots out to about a hundred meters, and the amount of water itself is hardly anything to scoff at. Granted, the stream barely had any shape, but for a first try, it’s astounding, even if she has to gingerly pick herself off the ground.  
  
She could feel how the bruises that she suffered from her impact were already fading, burning a little from the sheer amount of chakra rushing forth to speed up her healing, and for the first time, she let a small smile grace her face.  
  
It wasn’t just the raw amount of chakra she had: Rin wasn’t dumb. She knew that the Sanbi had a water nature, and it seemed to resonate with her own dual affinities of earth and water. At the moment, she couldn’t recreate her own techniques, given that they all relied of careful manipulation, but Kakashi’s use of raw strength seemed to work well enough for now. Her hands carefully moved through the required hand signs again, and this time, the water seemed to have a defined shape.  
  
Rin made a mental note to experiment with further water techniques, but for now it seemed to be what she needed, so she formed the signs again, a little faster.  
  
The sun had been gone for quite a while by the time she finally collapsed, feeling tired but sated. In front of her, the lake was calm, showing no signs of her efforts, and for some reason, it made her feel at ease. She leant against one of the large trees and allowed herself to drift off.  
  
By the time morning rolled around, it wasn’t the sun but her empty stomach that woke her, and as she roasted the rabbit that was unlucky enough to cross paths with her, she considered what she should do.  
  
Her final goal was to get the seal upon her fixed by Minato, but if for some reason she was forced to enter the village, she would release the tailed beast within her upon Konoha, and that wasn’t a thought she was willing to entertain. She put it aside for now- she had a lot of time on her hands before she would be entering the Land of Fire.  
  
For now, her priority was finding a way to cross over the ocean that separated her from her home. She had two viable options. One, the somehow scrounge up enough money to hire a boat, or cross the ocean by foot, hoping she could somehow regain the control required for such a feat. She ruled out earning enough money- she wasn’t willing to risk her life trying to find a job or a reliable captain. That meant that she would have to cross by foot, but her control was nowhere near good enough for that to happen at the moment.  
  
She raised herself and took a deep breath before bending her knees and leaping into the treetops. At first, she found it difficult to keep her balance, but not soon after she was sprinting through the foliage. Her first goal was to reach the ocean.  
  
After around three days of travelling, she had regained her confidence in tree-running, and while still not at the speed she been before, she could run for a lot longer. All was going well, until she ran into the Kiri nin.  
  
It was a complete accident. Before the incident, her chakra sensing ability had been one of her strong suits, and it had not completely dawned on her yet that without it she was pretty much blind. So, on the afternoon of the fourth day, she ran right over a group of camping Kiri nin. She realised what had happened the second she leaped over the clearing, and she almost lost her footing before she took off at an even faster sprint. Shouts followed her, and it wasn’t long before she could spy pursuers in her periphery.   
  
For all that they ran quickly, they were limited to staying on the ground, and so she had some sort of advantage. Not even a minute after, she was forced to dodge kunai and shuriken as they took aim at her. For one of them, she was forced to do a flip, and she caught a glimpse of the ninja after her. There were two of them, and they looked to be around chunin level.  
  
Given that she had recently been promoted to Chunin, she felt like she could take them. A surge of confidence rose up in her, and the dug her foot down, taking off in the opposite direction. She landed behind them, and, before they even had a chance to react, she had released a swift water dragon bullet. It caught one of them in the chest and he hit a tree with a sickening crack. The second was luckier and managed to dodge in time, flinging multiple weapons at her. One grazed her leg, two flew by her, and she caught the fourth one with her bare hand and a stiff wince.  
  
Before she even had to time to wonder how on earth she had done that, the second ninja was upon her, and it became a close combat battle, both of them swinging wildly with their kunai. He tried to go for her head, but she ducked. She saw an opening. She could swipe at his calves and sever the tendon, rendering him unable to walk. She dove forwards, but something began to bubble up inside of her.  
  
Rage. Anger. Bloodlust. It was if she wasn’t in control of her own body, and before she had even realise, she had her kunai buried in his throat.  
  
There was a silence, before he began to gurgle, blood running from the corners of his mouth. Rin pulled out the kunai, falling flat on her back, hands shaking. It hadn’t been her first kill, but it was shocking all the same, and she was frozen in place, both by fear and the horror at how easy it had been.  
  
By the time the body of the man she had killed stopped moving, she had regained her senses.  
  
“They’re enemy ninja,” she muttered to herself. “It was me or them.”  
  
No matter how much she tried to convince herself, she knew that she could’ve immobilised them instead, and it sent a sick feeling all the way to her stomach.  
  
She stood up and made her way towards him. No matter how much she needed new clothes, she couldn’t bring herself to take the man’s jacket, so she took only his weapons pouch. She had to run another few kilometres before she could calm her racing nerves and actually categorised what had been in the bag. She pulled out two sets of kunai, one of shuriken, some rations, and a Bingo Book.  
  
She put everything away except the book, which she slowly flipped through. It was one of the newer versions, and as she tried to remember the faces within, she quickly got to the S-class section.  Sarutobi Hiruzen, A, Orochimaru, Kisame, and many more. However, at the back of the book was the face of the person she was looking for. Or at least, had been looking for. Because there, on the last page, where she knew Minato’s page was, there was instead a large red cross, with the word ‘deceased’ printed below.  
  
Her heart stopped working. There was a roaring sound in her head. She couldn’t quite comprehend. _Minato is dead? How? And how am I going to fix my seal now?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers! Just managed to get this chapter out, and I hope you enjoy it.

There was a whistling sound and she wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the kunai that soar towards her entirely. It grazed her shoulder, drawing blood before embedding itself with a thud in the tree behind her. The Kiri nin must have had back-up. Bingo Book slipping from her grasp, she took off before she even saw it hit the ground. Her panic began to set in, she had had no time to rationalise her discovery before she was fleeing for her life again. Her shoulder felt numb.

She was running, but she couldn’t seem to see anything. The trees were a blur, her head spinning as she ducked around their outstretched branches. A set of kunai shot towards her, and this time she managed to dodge them. She stumbled, only just catching herself. _Run_ , a voice whispered in her head. Her legs sped up, chakra coursing through her body like a lifeline, pulling her along the beeline she cut through the woods.

There were three nin chasing her, she thought blurrily. Legs burning from the pure amount of chakra being pumped through them, she ran. She had no clue where she was heading, only that the air was getting thicker, headier, and that something within her was acting like a compass.

Her mind seemed to be getting foggier the longer the chase went on, she was having trouble seeing her surroundings, her sight narrowing to tunnel vision. The trees were getting thinner and thinner, forcing Rin to continue on the ground lest she be stopped by a snapping foothold. She cursed Kiri and their sparse growth, a longing for the great Hashirama trees of Konoha suddenly flickering through her mind, before all traces of shrubbery disappeared, and the ground beneath her feet turned to stone, Rin finding herself out in the open. It wasn’t a clearing though.

No, in front of her, spread out for as far as she could see, was the ocean. The waves were tall, splitting against the shore, and there seemed to be no landmass anywhere in sight. It should’ve made her tremble, but instead, she was filled with an entirely different feeling, something that she could not explain. _Safety_ , it seemed to say to her. _Home_.

She didn’t even hesitate. She took a single step on the rocky shore, and was off. The spray from the waves began to soak her shorts, and she was barely managing to keep on the surface of the waves. She had practised at the lake, but even experienced ninja had trouble crossing rapids like this, what with the water constantly shifting and breaking. Somehow, however, she was managing to move forward. She couldn’t spare herself the luxury of looking over her shoulder, but even her measly sensing abilities were able to detect the three signatures behind her, given that they had no interest in concealing themselves.

She had been on the waves for less than a minute, and yet already she could feel her grip beginning to waver. Her chakra control truly was horrible at the moment and she cursed under her breath, willing her body to move just a little faster, a little _further_. The next step she took had too little chakra, and her foot sank down a little, but somehow she was able to yank it out and keep going. That brief mistake cost her, and yet another kunai made contact, this time embedding itself into her calf.

The pain cut through the fog in her mind, and her chakra went wild, lashing out at the surroundings. The water under her feet exploded, and for a moment she was airborne, disorientated, and then she hit the surface of the water, hard. The breath was knocked out of her, and she began to sink. There was a coldness beginning to set into her limbs, both from the freezing water, and something else, a numbness originating from inside her body. _Ah_ , she thought with a strange sort of detachment. _The kunai were poisoned._

She tried to swim, to do anything to get back to the surface, but her limbs were limp. The water around her was cloudy with bubbles, but as she sank deeper, the water began to darken. Her lungs were burning from the effort of holding her breath, and she had lost control of her body. Black spots began to appear in front of her eyes, and she felt frantic. Her body was immobile, but her mind was racing.

She was going to die. She didn’t want to die. She couldn’t let herself die.

Something flickered within her, a spark of something that originated from her stomach. It grew, and she pulled at it with all her might.

 

* * *

 

She fell to the cold stone floor, the breath knocked out of her. The air was freezing, and she took gasping breaths, filling her lungs with oxygen.

Massive stone pillars rose into the inky blackness of the sky, while the floor beneath her was cold and wet. Her movements were slow and lethargic, her senses dulled by the residual poison, but she dragged her body upright with an exhausted shudder, trembling from the adrenaline in her veins. There was a clanging sound behind her.

A strange feeling began to well up in her, and once again, she could feel her muscles freezing up. There was energy in the air, heavy cold energy that seemed to weigh her down, that seemed to warn of incoming disaster, of something older than she could imagine.

Suddenly struck by a bolt of energy, she whirled around and froze, breath catching in her mouth and heart pounding. Looming above her, its one red eye fixated on her form, was a monster. It was the size of a mountain, easily as tall as the Hokage building, faintly resembling a turtle, with a murky grey carapace and dull red skin. Its face was the same grey shell, spiky and encrusted with age and indiscernible emotion. It seemed to radiate some indescribable energy, that reminded her of stories she heard- of waves that demolished entire cities and of the abyssal darkness that lurked in the unknown.

“The Sanbi,” Rin whispered hysterically, feeling her knees tremble. Somewhere deep within her, she felt a part of her stirring, awakened by the powerful chakra that the turtle-like creature was radiating, and something inside her prompted her to hesitantly stepped forward.

The creature before her made no move, but she could sense in a change in the way it held itself, going from something resembling total control to an emotion resembling amusement. It’s one red eye stared directly at her, and despite feeling scared out of her mind, there was a sense of familiarity, a sense she truly couldn't describe - terrifying in it’s primality.  
They stared at one another for what seemed like an eternity, before something seemed to flash in the Sanbi’s eyes, a sort of confusion that quickly turned into laughter. It rumbled out, seeming to overflow from the giant turtle. The ground shook, but the Sanbi quickly composed itself.

“Amusing that you should find yourself here,” it said. It voice was deep, seemingly masculine. “So soon after the first time. You seem to simply attract trouble.”

“I’ve been here before?” Rin replied, confusion overwhelming her panic. She was sure she would’ve remembered if she had found herself inside a mindscape such as this.

“It was the only way I could save your life,” the turtle replied calmly. “You used to be incredibly fragile.”

Rin swallowed. “You- were you the one who saved me?”

“Who else do you think it could have been?”

“Thank you,” Rin replied, instead of answering the question.

Something akin to irritation passed through the eye of the Sanbi. “Do not thank me. It was not for your sake. I had spent the better part of a decade trapped in that infernal lamp, and I had no intention of either returning to that or to the void. It was the better of two situations.”

She fixed her gaze on it in turn, a sudden fire burning through her inhibitions. “Your situation may have been different, but you gave me a second chance, and I won’t waste it.”

The Sanbi snorted. “Had I not been who I was, human, you would have already lost your second chance. I doubt any of my brethren could have managed what I have done.”

“What you’ve done?”

“You will see soon enough.”

Rin opened her mouth to speak, but something caught her eye. There was a glimmer, and she turned her gaze away from the Sanbi’s face to look at its feet. Her eyes widened, brow furrowing after a second.

The Sanbi’s front feet were vaguely human in form and armoured, but it wasn’t that that had caught her attention. Wrapped around the Sanbi’s wrists, cutting deep into its flesh, were manacles. Massive, rusted manacles that cracked the armour and were taught in a way that made Rin wince. The armour had not yet begun flaking, but the way it was cracked made her realise that it would soon start to.

The Sanbi sneered at her look of shock.

“See what your human seals have done to me.”

Rin made no move, only keeping her gaze on the raw wounds around the Sanbi’s wrists.

“What is your name, human?” The turtle asked suddenly.

“No-Nohara Rin,” she answered. Her voice trembled a little, but not as much as she thought it would. “And yours?”

The moment the words left her mouth, she felt like smacking herself. The pleasantry had slipped out, as if it were another human she was talking to, not a monstrous chakra construct the size of her entire village -which probably didn’t even _have_ a name. She opened her mouth again, frantic to take it back, but paused at the turtle’s reaction.

He had narrowed his eye, gaze intense. Another long pause.

“Perhaps one day you will be worthy of my name.”

The Sanbi had a name? Rin froze, eyes wide. Wasn’t it simply called the Sanbi?

“For now, though, you have spent far too long in this mindscape. It is time you return to the real world. Hopefully this time my help will be enough to allow you to survive.”

The ground beneath Rin’s feet began to melt. Stumbling, she flailed her arms, but a hole had opened up beneath her, and she plunged into it. Immediately, the uneasy feeling that had lodged itself deep within her vanished, and she was thrust abruptly back into the present moment.

A gasp, and she was inhaling water, once again sinking, sinking in the cold emptiness of the sea. The numbness returned, her limbs stiffening yet again, and she reached one frantic arm high, straining towards that faint light she could see on the surface, and… the water around her shifted. As if caught in a relentless tide, she was tugged to the side, the speed with which the water was moving making her ears pop.

The pressure of the water pressed down on her, and the air was forced from her lungs in a burst of bubbles that disappeared before she could even comprehend the enormity of her having lost her final shred of oxygen.

 _No_ , she thought. _No, she was going to drown_ -

And she was thrown out of the water. The impact of hard ground beneath her did little except aid the racking coughs that tore through her body, the dry heaves leaving her collapsed, body frantically trying to expel water that she hadn’t actually consumed, take in the precious air she needed to stay conscious. Twice now, she thought darkly. Twice in the span of mere minutes had she been fighting for air, a shivering heap on the floor. Twice now had the only reason she was still alive been the massive chakra beast sealed into her stomach. An unwilling burden, and it truly tortured her to acknowledge that the reason she should have died, the reason why her whole life was turned upside down was the same reason she _was_ still alive.

_Well, third time’s the charm._

She pulled herself to her feet, her shivering muscles already burning with the now familiar feel of the Sanbi’s chakra, and looked over the vast sea from where she was perched at the edge of a truly monstrous cliff. Nowhere in sight could she see any more land, and she could only pray that she hadn’t been dumped on some tiny isle in the middle of nowhere.

Rin turned, and felt her heart beat faster in her chest, eyes widening in shock.

Stretched out before her was a ruin, broken seastone houses covering the entire landscape for as far as she could see. Even overgrown and razed, the buildings stood proudly, and Rin could almost imagine a vision of what had once been. A village by the sea, where one of the most brutal massacres in all of shinobi history had occurred.

Uzushio.

 

 


	3. Ghosts

The gentle slopes and grassy fields of Uzushio extended far past the ruins of the village, and Rin quickly came to the realisation that the cliff she had cleared was an anomaly. Most of the building remains were next to a river that wove its way down to the sea, and the hills (not truly hills, she thought cynically) extended far across the island.

The rubble of Uzushio told tales of a civilization far more sophisticated than that of any village. Pillars and bricks and the remains of what seemed to be a multi-story building larger than the Hokage’s tower were common.

While not the norm in Konoha, she assumed that the limited space of the island had forced the Uzushio shinobi to build upwards instead of outwards. Even so, the structures she could see seemed far too large for any sort of safety, too likely to collapse in case an attack.

When she saw the first carving, she realised how they had existed despite the opposition. 

Although void of chakra now, the markings were obviously seals, and despite being far out of her understanding, she could recognise structures meant for stability and endurance. With material like that, structures from her wildest imagination could be possible.

Uzushio hadn’t fallen during her time, but it had during Kushina’s, and she could remember the longing and nostalgia, undercut with true misery that would appear in Kushina’s eyes whenever-

No.

Rin shook her head. Tried to shake the memories away, because when she thought of Kushina she thought of Minato, and when she thought of Minato (dead, dead, he’s dead) she thought of Team 7, of black and silver, of explosions and rocks collapsing, of a jutsu that sung like a thousand birds, of a pain that consumed her entire being, of-

STOP.

She couldn’t do this to herself. She had to move on. 

She gritted her teeth and stood tall, forced her feet to move underneath and at the same time pushed her memories behind her, in a small box that she locked up and let sink into the depths of her mind.

Her pace quickened. She began to run, and she was out of the ruins. The grass came up to her knee, and a harsh wind blew through, whipping her hair against her face and neck.

She didn’t slow, only increasing her pace, and before long she could feel a burn in her legs, not from chakra but from the muscles themselves. 

Rin could feel herself reach her own limit, and with a growl, she channelled chakra into her body. Her own, and while she had nowhere near the same sort of control she had had, if she was able to run over waves, even for less than five minutes, she could pump it through herself. Faster and faster and faster. Still not fast enough. 

Not her own this time, but the wild green-blue chakra that originated from her stomach, from her seal.

The wind whipped like wires against her, painful and harsh, and her vision began to blur. Faster and faster Rin ran, until the horizon began to grow closer, the green rushing towards her, and she dug her feet into the ground.

Long furrows behind her, she stood motionless by the edge of the water, toes curled over a little ledge, and eyes gazing far off into the distance.

Her breathing was harsh, and now she could see rocks, massive rugged boulders that stuck out of the water like bone shards, like something broken, little more than a hundred meters away.

In the water beneath them, whirlpools churned, powerful swirls that would suck people down to the very bottom of the ocean if given a chance. 

Paying attention now, the line of destruction likely curved all around the coast, perhaps leaving some space near the old village.

Uzushiogakure no Sato. The Village Hidden by Whirling Tides. The Land of Whirlpools.

She didn’t know the geography, Rin realised. The Land of Whirlpools had been such a small country, didn’t even have a population any longer. It hadn’t been named on any of the Elemental Country maps displayed in the Academy classroom, and she hadn’t had any missions near Kiri. 

She could make a logical guess and say that she doubted anyone in her generation even knew it existed. One of Konoha’s greatest failures, a sign of it’s weakness-there had probably been a reason she had heard neither hide nor hair about it apart from her books and Kushina.

It was near Kiri, she knew that much. The distance, however, she couldn’t even begin to guess. 

She knew the Sanbi had propelled her through the water, but she had been half-unconscious and so panicked that she had no idea of time or speed.

Either way, Uzushio was not an easy place to reach, and Rin realised that she could stay here for a while until she was ready to move on. Isolated from threats, as it was.

She tentatively sat down, letting her legs dangle over the cliff as she leaned back. 

She needed to be untouchable if she wanted to survive. There would always be somebody out there who was stronger, but now that she no longer had the support of a village, she needed to be able to take on anything that challenged her, as the Kiri shinobi had demonstrated.

Her medical techniques were all but useless now. Not only was her chakra control rubbish, her new regenerative powers were more than enough to let her escape all but the worst of injuries.

She needed to focus on Taijutsu and Ninjutsu, but even as smart as she was, it wasn’t like she had memorised every technique she had ever seen. Sure, she knew the Water Dragon Bullet and how to make a shadow clone, but those were nowhere near enough. She either needed to find somebody to teach her, a jutsu scroll (very unlikely), or she needed to specialise in something that didn’t need to be learnt from somebody else. 

Even taijutsu had styles that had to be learnt, however.

Rin sighed, looking up.

The sky was a bright blue, and far above, a seagull turned in the sky, looking for fish in the water. Sparrows chirped from somewhere.

It should be raining, she thought sarcastically. It was almost humorous how the weather throughout all her time so far had been nothing but ridiculously out of place. It wasn’t like she was one of those characters from the fiction books that the civilians read, but some part of her still expected it to rain during the emotional parts of her life.

The weather didn’t care for anyone, Rin thought. It was simply there, uncaring and omnipresent.

Like the Sanbi.

The…Sanbi…

Struck by an idea, Rin closed her eyes, clasping her hands together in a rat seal to increase her concentration. She stilled her chakra, and tried to focus her mind towards the seal on her stomach.

There was something there, like a dark hole, a tunnel hidden just beneath the surface.

She pushed, and it sucked her in.

For the second time in the past half-hour, she found herself inside her mindscape. Or, Rin thought, the sealscape. 

No longer in the middle of a crisis, she could fully take in the strange interior.

The floor was marble, an off-white coated in what seemed to be algae, still damp. The ‘room’ she was in was quite large, and massive cracks ran up and down the sides, green and discoloured. In front of her, there was a ledge, and below the ledge, a writhing mass of dark green water. 

It sloshed and spilt over the edge, waves crashing against the walls and overflowing around Rin’s feet. The Sanbi was nowhere in sight.

Rin knelt and tentatively ran her fingers through the water. It was ice cold, and as she raised it to her lips, she found it was salt-less, more akin to rivers that to the ocean.

“Sanbi,” she called out. Her voice echoed off the walls, multiplying into a cacophony of unrecognisable sounds.

Yet again, she glanced around the room. The only place the Sanbi could be was the water, and yet she had no wish to dive in.

Beneath her, she could see the ledge she was standing on as it extended into the depths, turning from brackish beige to a deep muted green. 

A glimmer caught her eye.

To her right, a few centimetres below the water level was a chain. Embedded in the wall, it led down into the water. It was completely still. Not even the motion of the waves was disrupting it.

She moved over, lying flat on her stomach. Reaching a hand down until her arm was submerged until the shoulder, she wrapped her hand around half of the link and tried to pull.

Another wave came over the ledge, soaking her to the skin. She gritted her teeth and kept pulling, but the chain was too heavy, too still, too large.

Both hands now, and yet nothing she did caused the chain to budge. Frustrated that her plan wasn’t working, she channelled chakra to her hands, and was thrown back as her chakra raced down the chain like lightning. She had only a second to be surprised before the water started boiling.

Leaping backwards, she landed with a hand on the ground, ready to sprint whichever way necessary, chakra coiled low and ready in her legs.

It was unnecessary.

Out of the frothing water emerged first a spiked shell, then a shining red light, until the Sanbi stepped foot on the marble floor, water pouring like a waterfall of the back of his sloped carapace.

“How did you get here?” The Sanbi questioned. There didn’t seem to be surprise in his voice, but there was a hesitance, a warning.

“Through my seal,” Rin replied, standing tall.

“And why have you come here, shrimp?”

“I need you to teach me.”

Bellowing laughter filled the room as the Sanbi leant slowly forwards. By the time it was still, even the echoes of it’s laugh had vanished. Rin stood still as the Sanbi looked her in the eyes, it’s one red orifice a mere meter from Rin’s face. Her neck began to hurt from looking up.

“You,” the Sanbi said, and this close it’s voice sounded low, like a rumbling purr. “You came to me for help.”

It wasn’t a question.

Rin nodded anyways, refusing to turn.

“You’ve had Jinchuuriki before me, right?” She was impressed at herself for not letting her voice tremble. “Can you teach me their skills?”

“You ask for my Jinchuuriki’s skills?” The Sanbi snapped, complacency giving sudden rise to fury. “I am the one with powers that humans could ever recreate without my chakra. I am the one who rules the waters, who creates tidal waves on a whim, who can turn human villages into coral reefs with a mere thought and who can reduce mountains to rubble.

“You gain access to my power, and the first thing you ask for is my past Jinchuuriki’s abilities?”

“I’m sorry,” Rin said.

The Sanbi froze.

“Could I learn to use your powers then?” Rin asked. “I need to be better.”

Like the cold calm after a storm, the Sanbi slowly lowered itself, until it was eye to eye with Rin, limbs bowed.

For a long, tense moment, there was no sound other than the sound of dripping of water, and nothing else in her vision except one large, glowing red eye.

“I can guide you, but I will not hold your hand,” he said warningly. He flared his chakra, and Rin’s eyes snapped open, just as a seagull in the sky above began to dive towards the sea. 

Sparrows chirped, the wind blew, and the sun shone down on everything with a blaze.

No time had passed.

The Sanbi hadn’t taught her anything, and yet, somehow, Rin simply knew what to do. She snatched a pebble off the ground, felt the blaze of blue-green energy rush through her hand, and watched with wide eyes as the pebble exploded in a conical shape made of a strangely porous pink stone. She had never seen it before but somehow she knew what it was. Coral.   
She brushed her fingers over the long strands of grass, and they bent under the weight of their new structure, green strands coated with a heavy layer of pink.   
This, she thought gleefully. This, she could work with.   
  



End file.
